A piquant Paris - Really old....around 14th century. But, preserved and refurbished, remodeled to appease a contemporary traveller. This is the first impression one gets stepping into the city. The serene beauty of the Seine river, the solemn Notre-Dame cathedral, the sprawling, garangatous old Louvre museum which holds most of the Renaissance paintings and sculptures in the world, a more modern Musee d'Orsay which boasts the numerous Impressionists paintings of Monet, Renoir etc, the beautiful Champs d'Elysees ending at the Arc of Triumph, the cute Parisian streets, of course the famous views from the Eiffel Tower - all look like they have been carefully fitted together like a jigsaw puzzle. Blue print for how a city architecture ought to be. If you're a Dan Brown fan like me, you can soak it all up - the Pantheon, the androgynous Mona Lisa (or ' La Joconde' as the French call it), and the ugly, but significant Pyramid Inversee (remember the 666 glass panes